


(We Were) Reaching In The Dark

by lady_ragnell



Series: Prompt Reposts [41]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 08:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15457704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Enjolras starts attending meetings for a Soulmate Loss Support Group, and meets Grantaire.





	(We Were) Reaching In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on my tumblr](http://theladyragnell.tumblr.com/post/171630754678/er-prompts-1-and-27) for a prompt from madisonmaximus, mixing the tropes of soulmates and meeting at a support group.
> 
> Title from "The End of Love" by Florence and the Machine.

Enjolras doesn’t think it bothers him until Combeferre meets Éponine. He’s not there when it happens, but Combeferre comes home walking on clouds, showing Enjolras the record of her words that turned black as she said them and already talking about how to overcome difficulties, things that might be strange for her or for him.

It’s only when he stops that Enjolras realizes he’s clutching his side where there are ridges, scars he hardly notices except when he’s washing them. “I’m happy for you,” he says, belated and a little dazed, and it’s not a lie, but his voice, which never fails him when he needs it, gives out on him.

Combeferre puts an arm around him, never as comfortable with easy affection as Courfeyrac but always willing, always there when Enjolras needs him. He’s just never needed Combeferre because of this before. “I never asked,” he says. “I saw the scar, of course, but I didn’t ask. I’m starting to think maybe I should have.”

“I was five when it scarred over,” Enjolras says, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter, not right now. You’re celebrating, and I won’t get in the way.”

Combeferre frowns, but Enjolras is saved when Courfeyrac calls to congratulate him and tease him in equal measure, so at least the conversation is deferred.

*

The next day, Combeferre hands him a card. _Soulmate Loss Support_ , it reads. _Tuesday nights, seven o'clock_. There’s a location, a contact number and e-mail, and Enjolras looks at Combeferre, bemused. “I told you last night. I was five. I hardly remember anything.”

“It still matters. And I respect that you don’t want to talk to me about it while Éponine and I are still so new, but I’m concerned about your mental health at this point. Just go to one meeting. If it doesn’t help, or seems like the wrong fit, we’ll talk about other options.”

Enjolras wants to object, but he’s hyper-aware of his scar in ways that he hasn’t been since he was a child, and he doesn’t want to be this shaken every time one of his friends finds their soulmate. “I’ll try,” he promises, and Combeferre breathes out, relieved.

*

“Welcome to the club nobody wants to join,” says a stranger almost as soon as Enjolras walks into the community center for the meeting the next week. There are a dozen people scattered through the room, but the one speaking to Enjolras is his age or just a bit older, with dark hair and the inadvisable beginnings of a mustache and ridged, distorted skin on his neck.

Enjolras just blinks at him for a second, because he’s never been addressed that baldly before by someone he’s never met. First meetings are always a matter of dancing around, picking pretty phrases, asking friends for introductions to see how likely it is that the magic words will be said. Enjolras is used to doing it, even if there’s no reason for him to care. It’s polite. “Thank you,” he says, which would be unforgivably boring first words under other circumstances.

“We haven’t had someone new in a while.”

“A friend told me I should come. He found his soulmate, and … well, he found his soulmate.”

“I would drink to that if Simplice ever provided anything but fruit punch at these meetings. My roommates are a triad, and apparently I was excessively dramatic about it because they worried me into coming.”

“Grantaire,” someone says nearby, and Enjolras turns to find an older woman sighing at the man, who must be Grantaire. “Don’t scare him off.” She turns to Enjolras. “I’m Simplice, and I’m in charge of this meeting. We try to stay as low-pressure as we can—don’t feel like you need to spill your secrets tonight or any night, but we’re always willing to help as much as we can. We share some sorrows, though the circumstances are always different.”

“Thank you for the welcome.” He turns to Grantaire. “Both of you. I don’t really know how this works.”

Simplice squeezes his arm. “You listen, and if you want to, you speak. That’s all.”

*

Listening turns out to be hard. He and Grantaire are the youngest in the group, and Enjolras barely feels like he has a right to his grief, listening to the stories of the others—the frail old woman who lost her husband to a long illness after forty years, the man who knew his soulmate had died before the hospital called to tell him about her accident, the woman whose words are still stark and black on her arm but whose wife is in a coma in the hospital and won’t ever wake. They all speak up bravely. They talk about being invited to weddings and gritting their teeth, about a child who’s afraid of meeting his soulmate because he’s afraid of losing them, about the pity of anyone who sees the scars and how it grates.

“I didn’t even know it bothered me,” Enjolras says into a silence towards the end of the meeting, and everyone turns to him, attentive and patient. “I barely remember having a mark—I was five when he died, and I’d certainly never met him. My parents were almost relieved, because his first words to me were _That’s going to be a hell of a bruise in the morning_ and they didn’t like that. But my best friend met his soulmate last week, and … and it seems that it bothers me. I don’t know what to do with that.”

“The loss of potential hurts,” a man who hasn’t yet spoken assures him. “I lost mine when I was in my twenties and I never met her either. Searched the obituary pages for months, but I never found her, so she must not have been near me when it happened.”

“Is it better?” Enjolras asks, honestly curious. “Does it feel better after a while?”

“I have a girlfriend now—her soulmate turned out to be way better as a friend than a boyfriend, and she’s the one who got me coming to this group. But it will always trip me up.”

“Let’s talk about that loss of potential,” says Simplice gently, and Enjolras lets her tease his feelings out of his head until the hour is over and everyone starts saying their goodbyes.

He only realizes on his way home that Grantaire never said a word through the whole meeting.

*

“Hey,” someone calls on the street a few days later, and when Enjolras turns around, there’s Grantaire, jogging a little to catch up to him. “Enjolras, right?”

“That’s me. And you’re Grantaire.” Enjolras has no idea how to have a conversation with him outside of the safe confines of the community center, when he only knows one thing they have in common. “Sorry, can I … help you with something?”

Grantaire starts walking, and Enjolras falls into step with him. “I am just now realizing how awkward it is to have me chase you down on the street. I just wanted to see how you like our little merry band of tragedy.”

“There’s an oxymoron in there somewhere.” Enjolras considers. “I think it could be helpful, but it’s hard to feel like my story matters that much. I don’t even really remember having a soulmate. Compared to some of them, who had them for forty years …”

“Yeah, they had them,” Grantaire says, to his surprise. “Sure, it hurts like hell to lose someone, but they had forty years together, and that’s, you know—that’s a normal amount of time to have someone. You lost those forty years. You’re not going to get them.”

Enjolras considers that for half a block. “You didn’t talk much at the meeting,” he finally says, because he has no way of responding to that.

“Maybe next time,” says Grantaire.

*

Enjolras goes to three meetings. It’s mostly the same group, one or two drifting in or out, but Grantaire doesn’t speak, as far as Enjolras can tell. Maybe his grief is recent, Enjolras tells himself, and he’s not ready.

He’s not prepared to see Grantaire somewhere else, but he walks into the Musain to meet his friends—not to mention to meet Éponine for the first time—and finds Grantaire already at a table in there, sitting and talking to Joly and Musichetta. Enjolras curses himself silently, standing in the doorway, because he should have realized earlier. Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta talk fondly about their roommate, referred to always as R, and Grantaire said he lives with a triad, and there aren’t a lot of them out there.

Grantaire looks just as surprised when he looks up and sees Enjolras in the doorway, and Enjolras sighs and goes over to them. “You must be the famous roommate,” he says, giving Grantaire an out, though he doesn’t seem the sort to take it.

“That’s me, practically a celebrity,” says Grantaire, and doesn’t say anything else about them having met before.

The whole meeting turns into more of a celebration, with Combeferre shyly introducing everyone to Éponine, who seems tense and prickly but also smiles whenever he ducks his head to address her privately and who shakes Enjolras’s hand briskly and tells him she’s happy to finally meet him. The addition of Grantaire makes the whole thing into something like a party.

Grantaire is on-edge, though. Enjolras is almost sure until he catches sight of Joly watching Grantaire with a frown, which confirms it. Grantaire is loud, full of flowery, almost-bitter speeches about love and romance and, whenever it comes up in conversation as it always does with them, politics. By the end of the night, Enjolras is baffled and losing patience with him.

Grantaire seems to realize it, because at the end of the night, he claps Enjolras’s shoulder on his way out the door. “I would say I’m not always like this, but actually I am, so … sorry, I guess? I’ll see you around.”

Enjolras walks home with Combeferre after he sees off Éponine, and the beginning of the walk is quiet, as it often is, both of them recovering from a few hours of warmth and laughter and constant talk. Combeferre is the one who breaks the silence. “Do you like her?”

“Very much, though I wouldn’t say no to having a longer conversation with her one-on-one.”

Combeferre nods. “I was thinking of having her over to the apartment for dinner sometime soon. You’d be welcome, and I think I’d invite Courfeyrac too. Just the four of us. She’s going to let me meet her siblings soon, so it only seems fair.” After a few steps, he speaks again. “Did you know Grantaire? Joly keeps saying he wants him to come to a meeting or two, but I thought he hadn’t.”

“I happened to know him from somewhere else,” says Enjolras.

Combeferre gives him a searching look, but he changes the subject, and doesn’t bring it up again.

*

At the next meeting of the support group, Grantaire seems full of restless energy. He doesn’t speak to Enjolras at the beginning like he usually does, doesn’t flirt with Simplice until she scolds him and makes him set out chairs for them all, just sits in his chair with his leg jigging listening while one of the usual members talks about a dinner with his dead soulmate’s sister and all the awkwardness they can’t seem to shake.

To Enjolras’s shock, Grantaire speaks up as soon as that story is done. “I met my soulmate two days before she died,” he says, and Enjolras’s stomach twists, because he’d assumed that Grantaire was like him, one who’d never met the person who he was supposed to be with. “We were thirteen, and we met doing some stupid community service shit, and she said _I’m so glad someone else is as bored as I am_ and I was so excited that she got stuck with _Holy shit_ on her arm from birth on, and I only met her one more time before she died.”

“That must have been difficult,” says Simplice, and there are murmurs of sympathy around the circle, but Enjolras is looking at Grantaire, and he doesn’t look like he’s broken some kind of dam of mourning. He looks _angry_.

“And the older I get, the more I think how cruel that was. Something out there said she was supposed to be the best friend or the love of my life, and I met her twice and she got—she died. And there are people in this room, they never even got that, but they have to mourn for the rest of their lives, and every time there’s someone else, or that they might want there to be, they have to deal with this _stupid_ guilt because it’s not what destiny had in mind for them, but why do they even get words? If they’re meant to be with a person, then shouldn’t that person stay alive?” Grantaire takes a deep breath, and sometime in there he looked at Enjolras and didn’t bother looking away. “Maybe the people who get to be with their soulmates for their whole lives would have been with them anyway, whether they knew or not. But I wish none of it happened, because I wish I’d never known.”

“Many people feel bitterness towards the system, after a loss or an abusive partner. You aren’t the only one to share that opinion, though I’d ask you to tread carefully around others’ grief in this group,” says Simplice, and the conversation moves on without Grantaire, who’s now staring at the floor like all the energy has gone out of him.

After the meeting, when Grantaire leaves as soon as Simplice calls it to a close, Simplice calls Enjolras over to help her put the chairs away. “Is he okay?” Enjolras asks, because there’s only one thing she could want to talk to him about.

“I don’t know. But he’s been coming to this support group for almost two years and that’s the first time he’s talked about his soulmate at all.” Enjolras looks at her, startled. He’d known Grantaire doesn’t speak much during the meetings, but surely at least once he would have mentioned it all. Simplice shakes her head. “I don’t know if tonight was good or bad for him. But I hope you’ll help him, if you can.”

“I’ll do my best.”

*

Enjolras calls Musichetta, because he really has no idea what else to do and she’s the only one of Grantaire’s roommates who can keep a secret. “I need you to check on Grantaire.”

“He’s sulking in his room,” she says, wary. “Care to tell me why?”

“You’re one of the ones who told him to go to the support group, right?” Her silence is answer enough to that, though he can hear her breathing. “Combeferre sent me. And I’m not going to tell anyone’s secrets, but I think Grantaire could use someone tonight. Give him my number? He doesn’t have to call, but … but give him my number.”

“Okay.” She sighs. “You okay? Should I be calling your support team?”

“I’m okay. Just worried about him. And Combeferre is right in the next room if I need him.”

*

Two hours later, Enjolras is thinking about going to bed even though he knows he won’t be able to sleep when an unknown number calls his phone. He picks it up without thinking twice. “Grantaire?”

“If you’re up for it, come on a walk with me.”

He should say no. It’s getting late, and it’s been a long night, thinking about Grantaire and his story and all his bitterness at soulmates and the cruelty of the universe. “Of course,” he says anyway. “Where?”

Twenty minutes after that, and after a brief and concerned interrogation from Combeferre, Enjolras meets Grantaire in front of a twenty-four-hour shop that he apparently just bought a bad coffee in, judging by the smell. They don’t say anything at first. Grantaire walks and Enjolras falls into step, lets Grantaire steer them because he was the one to ask Enjolras to come.

“I don’t like letting the universe or God or whatever it is that gave us these marks tell me what to do,” Grantaire finally says. “Never have. I mean, I was devastated when she died, I still visit her grave a few times a year, but I shouldn’t have to be devastated. She should just be some cool girl I met once during community service who died. I should be falling in love with people without fucking worrying that they’ll leave me because of some mark, or thinking they’ll never love me as much as they would if the marks didn’t exist in the first place.”

“As sad as I am about the potential, I think I’m lucky. His death means that I grew up into someone he might not have been soulmates with anyway, which means there are possibilities. Sure, he would have been one, if he’d lived, maybe the only one, but he didn’t. And her death means that you grew up into someone different, too. Maybe someone who isn’t her soulmate anymore.”

“Then whose am I?”

“No one’s. Or anyone’s.” Grantaire doesn’t seem to have an answer to that, so Enjolras struggles for more words. “You and I, we’re always going to have our regrets. For them, for the lives we could have led or who we could have been. But we’re alive, and from the moment they died our choices are our own.”

They’ve walked several blocks before Grantaire finds his answer to that. “And if we fuck it up? Fall for someone we’re not supposed to be with?”

It’s Enjolras’s turn to be lost for an answer, but after a while, Grantaire’s hand brushes against his, and he grabs it, holds on, as they walk in silence through the city.


End file.
